June 17th marks the debut of AEW’s new Saturday night ‘Collision’ show and, with it, the return of CM Punk to an AEW ring. Nine months after the infamous ‘Brawl Out’ debacle, one of the most popular (and divisive) pro wrestlers of the 21st century makes his re-debut to the company whose VP’s he bad-mouthed. He is set for a 3-on-3 main event, teaming up with buddies FTR to take on the Bullet Club and Samoa Joe. Setting everything else aside, those six names getting into a ring together, in the year 2023, is a special event.
It also feels like a letdown at the outset. The intervening time since Punk went on the shelf for a triceps injury/internal suspension has seen no shortage of backstage rumour-mongering, some of it true and some of it not. The purpose here isn’t to hash out backstage details, because there are very few people who know what actually happened at Brawl Out and what is actually happening backstage right now. Instead, the purpose is to just discuss the return itself, so let’s do that.
There is no shortage of pro wrestling stories that took their cues real-life stories: Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage making amends, of sorts, in WCW after their WWF fallout; Eddie and Vickie Guerrero having trouble in their real-life marriage and bringing that to the screen, which included the famous Custody Of Dominik Mysterio angle; Edge and Matt Hardy feuding because Hardy’s real-life and wrestling-life girlfriend, Lita, was cheating on him in the real world with Edge. There are more, but there are examples of pro wrestlers setting real, serious animosity to the side for the betterment of the on-screen product.
That brings us to Punk, the Elite, and AEW. Following Brawl Out, it sure does seem as if Punk wants nothing to do with Kenny Omega, Adam Page, or The Young Bucks, and that feeling is reciprocated. Not only are they steering clear of each other backstage, for now, they are doing so on-screen: in a recent interview with ESPN, Punk said that a story with The Elite will not turn into an on-screen angle and that he does not like the idea of being portrayed as the bad guy in all this. In many situations, this could be a fake-out because, after all, this is pro wrestling and pro wrestlers are always working their audience. By the same token, ESPN is a company that does not allow for the progression of pro wrestling storylines in their interviews; agree with them or not, they are a journalistic enterprise. Advancing storylines in interviews with fans is fine, but Trojan Horse-ing a Punk/Elite feud in an interview with ESPN would likely ensure it would be the last interview an AEW wrestler would have with ESPN, and that’s not publicity the company can afford to lose. For those reasons, when Punk says this will not be turned into a story, I believe him, at least for the short-term.
Therein lies the problem with all this: the only story that makes sense is some permutation of Punk vs. The Elite. Whether it be Punk vs. Kenny Omega, or Punk vs. Adam Page, or Punk and a friend vs. The Young Bucks, or some sort of gauntlet against all members of The Elite, it’s the only story that matters. The AEW fanbase is a hardcore fanbase; the people in the stands and watching at home know, by-and-large, exactly why CM Punk missed nine months (triceps injury aside), and exactly why The Elite were off TV for a few months after Brawl Out. Ignoring the extremely obvious problem doesn’t make it go away. In fact, it will likely only grow.
To put it another way, it’s as if a parent left one night to go get cigarettes, didn’t come back for nine months, then came home, sat down at the dining room table for supper, and just never talked about disappearing for nine months. Maybe the rest of the family can kind of pretend it didn’t happen for a while, but the Jupiter-sized elephant in the room needs to be addressed before any kind of progress can be made. That family might want to talk things out over the dinner table.
In pro wrestling terms, that means bringing the story to the screen. If they could hash things out behind the scenes, that’d be great, but then that hash-out would need to come to the screen, too. The fans know there is a lot of bad blood backstage between certain people. Punk cannot walk through the curtains with a giant smile on his face and yell “IT’S CLOBBERING TIME” like he didn’t just spend the last nine months buying cigarettes. The fans need to know, one way or another, that this thing has been, or is being, resolved. For my money, there is probably a large contingent of AEW fans that want to see Punk get the shit kicked out of him, on screen, by either Page or Omega. Until that happens, the company runs the risk of a lot of muted reactions from fans. Again, if you spend nine months buying cigarettes, you can’t come home with a bouquet of flowers and think your spouse is going to be over-the-moon thrilled to see you. To keep everything together, and to keep the family invested in itself, the hard conversations need to happen.
The story needs to play out, on screen, for the much of the fan base to invest again. Punk may not want to be portrayed as the bad guy, but if that’s what it takes for a lot of fans to care about him and the new ‘Collision’ show, then so be it. There is a money-making feud that AEW can put together between Punk and The Elite. It can include people like FTR or Samoa Joe, but it needs to have Punk vs. The Elite in some manner. There is an opportunity to cobble together probably the most compelling story that AEW has had in their four years of existence, and not going in that direction with some haste will be a misstep. Perhaps they proceed in this direction after the stadium show in England at the end of August; a couple months will have passed and maybe tempers will have cooled by then. It may also be too late to get fans to buy back into a CM Punk return because Dad went for cigarettes nine months ago and thinks we’ll still listen to him when he says it’s time to be entertained. No, Dad needs to explain where the fuck he was, and he needs to do it soon before fans run away from home for good.
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